Edinburgh News: theatre

Of all the constituencies who might find themselves drawn to this production, it is undoubtedly the smallest who will be best-served. Michael Barrymore fans will not see much of the manic energy for which they presumably fell way back in his 1980s heyday; Spike Milligan fans will not see much of the zany, left-field originality that characterised the best of the former Goon’s career; but fans of former Strictly Come Dancing star Jill Halfpenny will have no trouble spotting the sparky Northern lass who can turn on a sixpence whilst flashing a winning smile, thank you very much.

You have to spare a thought for poor old Chekhov. There he is, a writer who created a whole genre that inspired artistic descendents of the calibre of George Bernard Shaw and Woody Allen, and then the second he goes out of copyright whole armies of also-rans take it upon themselves to adapt, transpose and generally muck about with his plays in any way they see fit.

As I write this, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics is sprawling across my TV screen, making me reflect on the fact that, as a species, we really do like nothing better than a visual spectacular.

This is the second visit to Edinburgh for Lynn Manning’s engrossing one-man show, which tells the story of his life from his disrupted Los Angeles childhood through to his being blinded in a bar-room shooting and his subsequent emergence as an independent poet, playwright and actor.

Visitors to this website of more than a couple of years’ vintage will remember that we used to have a scoring system for reviews that was based on how many drams of whisky you would need to consume in order to get through the show. Sadly, the drams were composed merely of pixels, but even a virtual tot of absinthe would have been appreciated when I went down to catch a glimpse of the Green Fairy the other day.

The Battle of Pots and Pans is based on a battle that took place in l745 in the southeastern Scottish town of Prestonpans. It heralded the optimistic start of the Jacobite rebellion in which Bonnie Prince Charlie's Catholic Jacobite army defeated King George II's Hanoverian Redcoat troops.

There are surely times, especially these
days, when "care assistants" and even nursing staff wonder where they are - we
kind of know that care of our elderly is in a bit of a mess, and vaguely wonder
what awaits us if we eventually break a bone, become increasingly frail or
begin to forget not merely what we came into the kitchen for, but whether we're
in the right house or street.

It could be anyone's living room. Less tidy,
with a layer of dust, it could be this reviewer's. In a theatre, you could be
forgiven for expecting comedy, but this set represents the home of Des and
Doreen James, whose daughter Cheryl died at Deep Cut Barracks, one of four
young people to do so.